Bloggers Quilt Festival

The time has come around again for this fantastic festival.

It is always so inspiring to see all the amazing quilts people make.

Welcome if you're visiting from the festival- hope you enjoy having a look around.

My entry is a quilt I have just finished for a friend's 50th birthday.  

SPOILER ALERT!! 

Nigel, if you're reading this and you want any element of surprise, discipline yourself to look away now!

The decision process on what to make was quite protracted, then it took even longer to make it; mainly because I was slow and we were in different countries. Throw in an international move and time goes by so fast so now I'm nearly a year late! Making quilts for friends and family can be quite difficult because of differing tastes, but we had a lot of agreement on this one.

We pinned inspiration photos on a shared Pinterest board and had thought we'd come up with a plan; but then I just didn't feel inspired about our first decision which involved loads of narrow stripes, which would have looked look amazing but been quite tedious to do.  The colour palette emerged quite early: an ochre theme being common to many of the things Nigel pinned. I also decided that using shot cotton would give it the colour depth I was after. 

In the end we were inspired by this. I think it is by Tommy Fitzsimmons of Tommy's Art Quilts  so I would like to acknowledge her amazing work, very much more subtle and complex than mine.

The size of this is 47 x 68.5" so it just squeaks into the Small Quilt category. But I've decided to enter it into the Modern Quilts category.

 I wanted to make it quite improvisationally, so I cut panels in the approximate dimensions and experimented with the arrangement on my design wall. 

I wanted to have gently wavy insertions and a general sense of wiggliness, so I stacked the fabrics right sides up and cut improvisational curves with the rotary cutter.

And then just built and inserted until I was happy.

I hadn't done this kind of curved piecing before but it went OK. Long gentle curves are much easier than small Drunkards Path blocks!

I quilted it using a variegated cotton thread, in long organic wavy lines to echo and accentuate the piecing.

I backed it using good old Ikea Nummer which I bought a bolt of before we moved to an Ikea-less country!

It makes such a versatile backing and here I highlighted the relevant number with a wavy frame of the different shot cottons.

For the binding I used left over strips of the various fabrics in the quilt.

After  trialling many different methods for attaching the binding over the years I have come back to my favourite: narrow doubled binding, machine stitched onto the front and hand sewn down onto the back.

I was bit nervous about washing it as I hadn't prewashed the fabrics, but I put in a colour catcher and all was well!

Hopefully it's the perfect size for a bit of coziness when reading or to drape over a chair

Isn't it funny how a quilt never looks finished until it's been bound and washed to find all its lovely crinkliness!

Now I'm off to look at all your entries in the festival...

By Jove I think She's Got It!

The wonders of the information available on the internet never cease to amaze me. Not to mention the fantastic interaction in the blogging community.  The lovely Annabella (who blogs at Life's Rich Pattern all the way from Morocco) left me a comment on my last post which simply said "I hope you don't pin...pinning is bad news for sure...much easier to ease", which sent me searching for answers.

I did press this, but it clearly needs another go, this was my first effort with the pins

In desperation after too many pins, puckers, unsmooth curves and consequent unpicking, I looked for tutorials on how to piece small tight curves and with in milliseconds (seemingly) had located Leanne's fantastic little video. Of course I'd come across Leanne's blog before and have been following for a while, so I wasn't surprised she'd posted this great little no-fuss tute.

Curves on the second attempt are much smoother

My curved piecing improved exponentially as soon as I tried this method. I think some of the difficulty was also caused by the compounding error of me making my own not-quite-up-to-the-mark templates.

Living and learning (yet again)!

The Path to Drunkenness

Now I know why this block is called this (Drunkard's Path for those not in the know)! 

It'll drive me to drink I swear!

I've been procrastinating on this one for July's do. Good Stitches.  Still a few days left in July...Two blocks is enough! One warm and one cool. Good to have the opportunity to try something I'd never do on my own! Never say never!

That said, I did do this quilt incorporating curved piecing, but the bits were a bit lot bigger! Like maybe three times the size

I laid out the Wonky Crosses so far. I think I'll need about 10 more blocks and am pondering what I need more of? Have some ideas, but canvassing opinions?

And I'm enjoying doing some forward planning

Now I'm off to make Osso Buco or we'll be having dinner at midnight!

Has anything been driving you to drink?

~Camilla

Linking up for the first time with Needle and Thread Thursday 

Eclipse on a Sunny Day

I've been waiting for a sunny day and beachy background to show you this quilt; which I think was the third one I made, finished a few years ago now.  It was a very long process, begun in NZ and stretched across two more moves one across the Tasman and one within Adelaide where we still live. 

It was my first go at curved piecing, which really wasn't as hard as I'd anticipated and the instructions were very clear. I added on a couple more rows of blocks to the pattern to make this a twin bed sized quilt.

 Leftover fabric was good for the scrappy binding

 The quilting was a meander in variegated thread, except within the circles where I used an FMQed spiral to emphasize the circle. Some went a bit wiggly woggly, especially on the larger outside parts of the spiral!

I left the lighter pieced circles unquilted, having stitched in the ditch around them.

This quilt was for my daughter who loved these colours. It's probably not what she'd choose now at almost 17, though she is still drawn to colour, but I think she still likes it and I'll make her another some day.

I didn't take any of the back, which is just a soft white flannelette sheet and the variegated quilting thread used front and back just gives it a little lift. I used wool batting as my daughter feels the cold!

The pattern (called Eclipse) was a free one from Fun Quilts Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr whom I've enthused about before. And much of the fabric is from a line they did too, though I did supplement it with a couple of others.